Drug administration based on a patient's activity status measured by acceleration sensors

Abstract

It is described a drug delivery system (100) that is adapted to infuse a drug in a profile related to the activity status of a patient (595). The system comprises acceleration sensors (112), dedicated electronics (120) and software to monitor the patient's activity and maintain control over the drug-release profile. The described system (100) enables a personalized treatment of patients (595) by monitoring their individual activity status and coupling this information to a drug delivery following appropriate delivery profiles. The system (100) may be provided with a memory in order to store a time dependence of activity data. This time dependence may be used by physicians to monitor, support and adapt their therapy for the patients. The system (100) maybe realized as a closed-loop system for monitoring and treatment of various diseases such as Parkinson s disease. Accelerations sensors (112) may be used in order to directly monitor a positional state and / or motions of the patient's body. The described system may allow for a more efficient use of the delivered drugs. This will result both in a reduction of the amount of required medication and a reduction of power required by the system (100).

Description

FIELD OF INVENTION[0001]The present invention relates to the field of delivering drugs to a patient. In particular the present invention relates to a system and to a method for automatically delivering drugs to the body of a patient in a correct dosage by appropriately controlling the operation of a drug delivery device.ART BACKGROUND[0002]Traditionally, drug products are given via tablets or oral capsules. These are taken for example once a day in the morning or in the evening. This results in a bolus in the blood drug level after intake and a subsequent exponential decline of the drug in the blood over time. More advanced systems take into account timing of medication to increase drug efficacy by advising the patient to preferably administer the drug at some time of day, for example in the evening after having diner. At some time during the day, prior to the next administration, the blood drug level may be below a lower therapeutic limit and the patient may experience symptoms and...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0011]The described drug dosage dependency on the activity status can be used in order to optimally adjust the drug dose. This may provide the advantage that a disease the patient is suffering from can be treated in an optimal way. Therefore, depending on the particular disease the comfort of the patient and / or the expected lifetime of the patient may be increased. The administration of the optimal drug dosage further provides the advantage that the amount of drug being necessary for treating a disease can be reduced such that the effective medical costs for the treatment can also be reduced.

[0056]This aspect of the invention is based on the idea that the required amount of a drug administration to a patient's body may strongly depend on the activity status of the patient, wherein the activity status is characterized by a motion pattern respectively a movement status of the patient's body or at least of parts of the patient's body. By measuring the activity status of the patient this dependency can be used in order to optimally adjust the drug dose, which has to be delivered. This may provide the advantage that a disease the patient is suffering from can be treated in an optimal way. The optimal drug dosage may provide the advantage that the amount of drug being necessary for treating a disease can be reduced such that the effective medical costs for the treatment can also be reduced.

Problems solved by technology

This results in a bolus in the blood drug level after intake and a subsequent exponential decline of the drug in the blood over time.

The disclosed drug delivery device has the disadvantage that, once activated, there is no further control of the amount of drug, which is going to be delivered to the patient.

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